My precious...

Thursday, October 29, 2015

Most people say, “The NRA” but I pronounce it, “Ner-raw.” It
sounds kind of primal, a growl and a sneer at the same time. I say it all the
time, sometimes to scare my wife’s cats, “Ner-raw,” as I round a corner,
reminding them that I have the constitutional right to own as many guns as I
can fit into my house, car, and pants. Having seen me in action with a squirt
gun, the cats are probably happy that there’s only just enough money for cat
food. After the latest hairball incident, they don’t want me roaming around the
house with a loaded Desert Eagle.

In the days following yet another twisted loner pumping
bullets into a large group of people, the folks with armed pants (yes, clothes made
for chimpanzees) are not asking, “How do we stop these tragedies?” but “How do
we stop Obama’s Muslim buddies from taking our guns?” Ner-rah, committed as
they are to turning teachers into paramilitary commandoes, manages to steer the
conversation towards mental health, apparently unaware of the irony, the
insanity of denying that these bloodbaths are the result of people firing
weapons at human targets.

Pick at Ner-raw’s skin long enough and what will be revealed
is their own insane fantasy of being a “super patriot” insurrectionist warrior,
the defender of frontier values. In less time than it takes to load Pez
dispensers with shiny bullets, Ner-raw’s Basement Brigade begins warning of the
made-up people who will be coming for everyone’s guns and decides that the most
logical response is to declare
war against the US.

Yes, despite the US having drones and hundreds of other
things that rain death from the sky, millions of really, really big guns that
require teams to move and fire, a navy, and millions of people who go to work
every day for the sole purpose of waging war at any moment (as opposed to
waiting until the Hot Pockets have been nuked in the RV before starting the
Saturday shoot-a-thon), the Basement Brigade believes that the Tree of Liberty
will be watered with blood, presumably the blood of the people who own almost
all the serious war shit and train 24/7 to use it. Mental health issues,
indeed.

Given that their fantastic war is premised on the guh-mint breaking
down a door to take a perfectly legal stash, you’d think that DEA
raids on medical marijuana clinics would get the gun crowd losing their
collective shit over federal powers and individual rights. Oddly enough, you’d
be wrong. Since marijuana dispensaries
aren’t usually fronts for weapons warehouses, the Second Amendment holy rollers
must have shot all the fucks they had to give when it came to hippies and sick
people. There’s zero chance that we’ll see Ner-raw’s flapping jaws on Fox
spraying outrage over a bunch of shut down medical marijuana clinics.

Despite their seeming concern with everyone’s mental health,
Neh-raw seems curiously ambivalent towards law enforcement shutting down any
kind of clinic. In fact, it wouldn’t be overly wacky to assume that the average
phone contact list, of those state officials and law enforcement who raided
Planned Parenthood offices in Texas, contained a veritable Who’s Who of the
local Ner-raw. Indeed, why own a gun if you can’t poke it in someone’s face
after kicking down their door? With any grasp of self-awareness and irony dropped
in favor of a bony gun grip, the Ner-raw members raiding the clinics saw
themselves as Pro-Life patriots, doing God’s work while brandishing guns, protecting
Texans from lawful health care services.

Perhaps it’s just a question of priorities – an ovary won’t
kill an elk – but my guess is that Ner-raw and its hardcore members are really
only interested in arms bearing with the rest of the Bill of Rights being
either partial or total bullshit. They’re willing to throw their country into
war against itself if there’s a hint that they can’t have whatever gun is
necessary to shoot
at toy spiders but when it comes to their country abridging other rights,
they’re off spray painting their lawns or reprogramming the fake fish on the
wall to sing “The Ballad of the Green Beret.”